this has completely thrown me all day and it's stemming from something that's plagued me for..a long forking time. I don't really know who to talk to about it, and for the most part I don't know of any real solution to it.

The more places you see, the more things you see that appeal to you, but no one place has them all. […] So you keep looking even more, but it always gets worse the more you see.[...]The more you travel, the more numerous and profoundly varied the relationships you will have. But the more people you meet, the more diffused your time is with any of them. […] Yet you keep traveling, and keep meeting amazing people, so it feels fulfilling, but eventually, you miss them all.

on the surface, it's pretty easy to dismiss it as a fairly first-world problem, I suppose, and I guess that's how I communicate to myself when I try and pass it off as nothing. I guess that's part of it though - it's hard to relate to others because I feel a bit of a privileged wanker to feel bad about it. and not many people I know have expressed the same feelings to be able to relate in quite the same way. the more I reflect on it, though, the deeper it is. it's fundamental to who/how/what I am these days.

I don't even know where to begin to explain any of the feelings it evokes within me, but it's pretty heavily emotional. by and large (albeit oversimplified), it feels like I'm in a hole and and I have a shovel to keep me company. the further I try to dig (see more things! invest more heavily in a community!), the more empty it feels when I (invariably) move on. so why move on? because staying feels even less satisfying, I suppose. (or more handwavy: I have a fairly strong attitude on following my heart. I've been doing that. I'm starting to wonder if my head actually knows best after all. buhhh)

idealistically (and I still do believe it, though perhaps that's naive), I think for the right reason I'd settle somewhere reasonably happily. make do with what's around and so on. but I'm not there, so I keep wandering and looking. I don't know that there's a solution or endpoint. that's frustrating.

this has completely thrown me all day and it's stemming from something that's plagued me for..a long forking time. I don't really know who to talk to about it, and for the most part I don't know of any real solution to it.

The more places you see, the more things you see that appeal to you, but no one place has them all. […] So you keep looking even more, but it always gets worse the more you see.[...]The more you travel, the more numerous and profoundly varied the relationships you will have. But the more people you meet, the more diffused your time is with any of them. […] Yet you keep traveling, and keep meeting amazing people, so it feels fulfilling, but eventually, you miss them all.

on the surface, it's pretty easy to dismiss it as a fairly first-world problem, I suppose, and I guess that's how I communicate to myself when I try and pass it off as nothing. I guess that's part of it though - it's hard to relate to others because I feel a bit of a privileged wanker to feel bad about it. and not many people I know have expressed the same feelings to be able to relate in quite the same way. the more I reflect on it, though, the deeper it is. it's fundamental to who/how/what I am these days.

I don't even know where to begin to explain any of the feelings it evokes within me, but it's pretty heavily emotional. by and large (albeit oversimplified), it feels like I'm in a hole and and I have a shovel to keep me company. the further I try to dig (see more things! invest more heavily in a community!), the more empty it feels when I (invariably) move on. so why move on? because staying feels even less satisfying, I suppose. (or more handwavy: I have a fairly strong attitude on following my heart. I've been doing that. I'm starting to wonder if my head actually knows best after all. buhhh)

idealistically (and I still do believe it, though perhaps that's naive), I think for the right reason I'd settle somewhere reasonably happily. make do with what's around and so on. but I'm not there, so I keep wandering and looking. I don't know that there's a solution or endpoint. that's frustrating.

I'd like to know "home".

I don't think it's a first world problem really. Yeah, you happen to have a situation where having money makes a lot of the traveling you do possible, but lots of people who have money do things other than travel, and lots of people who live nomadic lifestyles don't have money.

Feel free to talk to me about this anytime though...everything you said resonates with me and my experience soooooooooo much, wow, yeah.

_________________Man, fork the gender card, imma come at you with the whole damned gender deck. - Olives Did you ever think that, like, YOU are a sexy costume FOR a diva cup? - solipsistnationblog!FB!

Stupid police aren't doing anything to recover my stolen computer or catch the crasshole to kicked my door in and took a bunch of stuff.

When I talked to the investigator, she didn't even know someone had been caught breaking into cars in my relatively quiet apartment complex less than 2 hours after I came home to find the robbery. Seriously? And I just called her to give her the IP address of someone who's been using my computer (Dropbox gives you the last ip) and I'm *positive* it won't go anywhere.

I don't even know where to begin to explain any of the feelings it evokes within me, but it's pretty heavily emotional. by and large (albeit oversimplified), it feels like I'm in a hole and and I have a shovel to keep me company. the further I try to dig (see more things! invest more heavily in a community!), the more empty it feels when I (invariably) move on. so why move on? because staying feels even less satisfying, I suppose. (or more handwavy: I have a fairly strong attitude on following my heart. I've been doing that. I'm starting to wonder if my head actually knows best after all. buhhh)

idealistically (and I still do believe it, though perhaps that's naive), I think for the right reason I'd settle somewhere reasonably happily. make do with what's around and so on. but I'm not there, so I keep wandering and looking. I don't know that there's a solution or endpoint. that's frustrating.

I'd like to know "home".

don't give up, joshua! i accepted that i would never want to stay anywhere, was essentially forced to move to the last place in the world i'd thought i'd ever be happy in, and suddenly understood what it was to be in love. i think you're right to follow your heart; as frustrating as it is to not know just what it's looking for, it might be worse to ignore it. your home is out there.

_________________"rise from the ashes of douchebaggery like a fancy vegan phoenix" - amandabear"I'm pretty sure the moral of this story is: fork pants." - cq

Because it was raining, I drove my friend to work today. Less than five minutes minutes after dropping him off, my car died while I was driving, completely without warning.

I've checked all of the fluids, belts, fuses, and relays that I could get to, but still can't seem to diagnose it. Luckily, however, the car is only about a mile from my house, streetparked, so I can relatively easily go and tinker with it until I can either fix it myself / afford to get it towed.

The more places you see, the more things you see that appeal to you, but no one place has them all. […] So you keep looking even more, but it always gets worse the more you see.[...]The more you travel, the more numerous and profoundly varied the relationships you will have. But the more people you meet, the more diffused your time is with any of them. […] Yet you keep traveling, and keep meeting amazing people, so it feels fulfilling, but eventually, you miss them all.

on the surface, it's pretty easy to dismiss it as a fairly first-world problem, I suppose, and I guess that's how I communicate to myself when I try and pass it off as nothing. I guess that's part of it though - it's hard to relate to others because I feel a bit of a privileged wanker to feel bad about it. and not many people I know have expressed the same feelings to be able to relate in quite the same way. the more I reflect on it, though, the deeper it is. it's fundamental to who/how/what I am these days.

I would disagree that this is a FWP. I felt this as a child, an army brat moving from place to place every year. I was already a wanderer before I ever stepped foot out of the US, always ready to throw it all in a bag at a moment's notice. Then once I left the country, it became even more intense. I've found it in my inlaws, who yearn for a Japan that they've never seen, and there's some great literature by people whose parents came from Cuba and DR, and who have a desperate desire to find the lost homeland. Migration produces this just as much as travel.

It has profoundly changed me, and I like to look at it like a positive. My experiences and my mobility have made me more open minded, more educated, more tenacious, and more self-reliant. There are negatives, too- I feel rootless, sometimes, and i get not only homesickness but the whole gamut of culture shock feelings, no matter where i am. I start to see the same people, no matter where i go. Home is people, but home is also belief, music, literature, home is many, many more things than the land where my ancestors walked and the cemetery where they're buried.

But it makes me a better writer, and i've embraced it for what it's done to my life. I found it really interesting to read about the experience of migrants and expats, because they have it just as bad as travelers do. Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands profoundly touched me on the subject, you might enjoy it.

I can identify too, even though I'm an introvert and incredible homebody. My family consisted of immigrants. My dad was the first person in his family to be born in the US, and my mom moved there not because she had a burning desire to live there but simply to marry my dad. Even though I grew up culturally American, I never felt like it was truly my home. This was in part shaped by my mom's experience. She was really unhappy in the US (partly because of a bad marriage, partly because she went from the stimulating environment of 1960s Amsterdam to the relatively provincial backwater of 1960s Buffalo NY). We grew up being told we weren't really American, and thus never really felt 100% at home there. For the past 18 years (pretty much most of my adult life) I've lived in The Netherlands, and never really felt "home" here either. (To the Dutch, I'll always be American.) But at a certain point I also have seem to hit a point of no return where it feels like I can never go back to live in the States either. When I travel, every place seems so seductive, like it could maybe be that long lost place I'll feel fits like a glove (this is especially strong in places like Canada and Australia that both feel a bit New World and a bit Old World) but I know that if I were to live there, I'd feel the same sense of not quite being at home either. It's a hard feeling to come to terms with, and sometimes I feel like I can, and others I long to journey on and start over again. But it's been too long and I've gotten too old and I'm too much of a nester to follow my wanderlust, so I try to make a home where I am and hope and pray I don't regret not trying just one more time to find it.

_________________I ate the shiitake out of inappropriateness. - Hollie

buhhh, I'm sitting here trying to figure out the words. it was hard enough to find the words in that post yesterday, and today it just feels..not void, not empty, but still absent somehow. I think it's one of those things where I can't identify exactly what I'm looking for, so I don't know how to find it.

the concept of "home" has been strange for me for years now. I feel like Vancouver as a city is my "second home" (and forever will be!), but I still don't know what really is my first home. on a larger scale, I feel like Australia (as a country) is home in many senses, but that's to be expected. it's what I know, and it's the culture I grew up with. do I want to just *be* there and for that to be the end of it? no. I don't know why, but it's definitely not that simple. there are dozens of people I'd miss the absolute shiitake out of. that's heartbreaking.

I'm a huge introvert, and I spend a lot of time on my own. which makes it all the weirder to somehow reconcile the things that I'd miss. I did learn a couple of years ago how much I cherish the people in my life though, wherever they are in the universe. even if I'm stuck in the worst place on earth with people I care about, I'm happy.

lepelaar: it's weird that the ~month or so I've spent here in Portland (and fork, other time I've spent in other places since leaving NL) have felt more like home than NL really ever did. it's not a culture I really click with at large (making friends there is a perilous chore, and I've heard this from a lot of people. that's hard.)

I think the other half of the problem that hasn't been raised is that I feel like a rudderless boat. at some point, some opportunity or event will catch my sail and drag me to a shore (i.e. I'm here where I am now because of the Sanctuary Century ride this past weekend. but now that's over, so what next?). there are now waypoints on the horizon to give me any real sense of direction, so I'll just follow whatever comes up. and holy shiitake, it's *amazing*. I've done some great things, and seen some amazing places. so, so, *so* grateful, but it's not exactly purposeful at the moment. I'd like to steer this vessel on my own.

I guess ultimately: I don't know if I'm supposed to keep doing what I do and eventually things fall into place, or if I need to change some aspect of my life in order to find whateverthefuck it is that I'm looking for. I think that's a problem every single one of us faces from time to time though. stupid universe. why you gotta be so hard to figure out?

My back hurts so badly, I feel nauseus. It's a really icky sort of scraping feeling, razor sharp pain. Meds arent helping. My leg hurts too, when it stops being numb, but mostly I can't even tell where the pain is. It doesn't matter how I sit or move as long as I don't stand or walk (nothing new there)

. I know I've been way overdoing it at work, but this is ridiculous. I need to alter my plans for tomorrow so I don't have to move all day. Monday, we did a lab, and since 18 year olds don't know how to follow a simple bullet list of 5 easy directions (dropping a mineral in a beaker of water to find the volume) I had to stop and bend and walk around and help everyone for the entire period. Honestly. What do these kids do when they get jobs? If they need hand holding to drop a rock in a cup?

(real scenario: they could pick samples out of a big tray. Kid: I can't do this! The rock is too big to fit. Me: try choosing a smaller sample. Kid: blank stare. Crickets.)

Also, I'm hungry. I don't have any quick foods to eat or make, and I can't bear to stand in the kitchen and do anything.

_________________"This is the creepiest post ever if you don't know who Molly is." -Fee"a vegan death match sounds like something where we all end up hugging." -LisaPunk

So both of these things are pretty minor in comparrison, but I'm already super stressed, so it's making my day suck

I moved into my new apartment Sunday, and called this morning to make sure w/s/g was set to be billed to the apartment and make an account for electric. But the utility company has no record of an account for us, which mananagenent was suppose to have taken care of by the time of move in. If we were just paying the w/s/g ourselves, this wouldn't really matter, but it's suppose to be billed to the apartment complex, and they tack it onto the total due in their epayment system, so I can't just set up that account by myself, because then there is a chance it would get billed to us twice, and that would just be a pain in the asparagus to deal with.

And then last night i set up my epayment profile for paying rent, and the apartment complex has us owing less than what is in our lease on their epayment system. Either our lease is incorrect in the amount rent is each month, or someone forked up in entering our unit information online. I would be totally fine if we really owe less than previously told, but then we need $300 back from our first and last. If its a mistake though, that needs to be fixed ASAP, because the prorated rent for October is due next Friday.

I emailed management about both things seperately, and still haven't heard back. They have always responded with in the day about any other questions, so I'm hoping they'll get back to me by tomorrow. School is starting Monday and I want this shiitake cleared up by then. *sigh* I was hoping my first renting experience would be sligty less trouble.

I just got off the phone with my other best friend. I ran through all of the points I wish to make to my advisor and supervisor and she says they are all solid.

Good luck! I hope things go well with your adviser and supervisor!

I'm posting my whole saga over there rather than half here/half there. I also don't want to come off as narcissistic by complaining everywhere. The newest one is this:

starrynight87 wrote:

finnophile wrote:

Gosh, grad school is scary.

I get that.

It's the weirdest thing.

I just got off the phone with my other best friend, and then my advisor. The theme that came up was a lack of equivalency between my facial expressions and body language and those that I wish to project. This has been an issue I've had at least since high school. As a shy person, it takes me a long time to warm up to situations, and I often come off as being disinterested or aloof when I'm not. They interpreted that as an unwillingness to cooperate. Should I sign up for acting classes? Counseling? Both? Neither? He wasn't able to help me with that. What do you think?

I am EXTREMELY thankful that my supervisor put himself on the line for me and got me two weeks probation instead of expulsion. And I am extremely thankful that my advisor talked me through it tonight and didn't immediately ask me to give up. He said if he has to place me somewhere else, he would, so that I could finish this out.

I just want to thank you all for your support, and your ears (or eyes?) Between you and my in-the-flesh friends, it really helps me to be able to talk (write) it out.

The condensed version is that I was accused of being unprofessional by doing something I didn't even know I was doing. Damage control tomorrow. Yay.

Today was hard. This year has been hard. The hardest, saddest, most awful I have yet experienced. Amongst other things, my uncle is sick. forking cancer.

Today there was a little party at my cousin's house. I found out that part of the reason it was "family only" is because today was an opportunity for my uncle to pull everyone aside to tell them he is dying. There is nothing left to do. No surgery, no more chemo. Radiation as a last resort for pain relief. I knew this was coming but I'm not ready for him to die. I think he has mere months, if not weeks, left.

Oh Studio. I'm sorry. When I hear things like this my brain just sometimes thinks... what the fork is the deal with that shiitake, cancer? I mean... I get what it does... but sometimes I can't really wrap my head around why we can't always put it in remission. Blah. That shiitake scares the shiitake out of me! Many shiitakes. So may shiitakes you could make a shiitake salad.

Tried to spontaneously whisk my SO away on a weekend trip to the Grand Canyon because we've been very lukewarm towards each other lately and when I texted him to ask him if he could push his homework away until Monday, I got a huge angry text about how he's hot, tired, cranky, forgot to pack his lunch today, and that I'm trying to "dictate his free time this weekend" and that "whatever it is he's sure it's just going to cost him money". It wasn't. I was going to pay. I just asked if his homework was urgent or not. He never gave me a straight answer.

I bet he'd feel like a real asparagus if he knew it was because I was trying to take him to the Grand Canyon. Or maybe he'd find a reason to bisque about that. fork trying to be romantic and spontaneous.